It is fixed upon him with interest on interest; and this loan is
excepted
from all power of litigation.
Edmund Burke
" What I have
read to you is an extract of a letter from the Nabob
of the Carnatic to Governor Rumbold, dated the
22d, and received the 24th of March, 1779. *
Suppose his Highness not to be well broken in to
* See further Consultations, 3d February, 1778.
? ? ? ? 42 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
things of this kind, it must, indeed, surprise so known
and established a bond-vender as the Nabob of Arcot,
one who keeps himself the largest bond-warehouse
in the world, to find that he was now to receive in
kind: not to take money for his obligations, but to
give his bond in exchange for the bond of Messieurs
Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and to pay, besides, a
good, smart interest, legally twelve per cent, (in reality, perhaps, twenty or twenty-four per cent,) for this exchange of paper. But his troops were not to be
so paid, or so disbanded. They wanted bread, and
could not live by cutting and shuffling of bonds.
The Nabob still kept the troops in service, and was
obliged to continue, as you have seen, the whole expense to exonerate himself from which he became indebted to the soucars.
Had it stood here, the transaction would have been
of the most audacious strain of fraud and usury perhaps ever before discovered, whatever might have been practised and concealed. But the same authority (I mean the Nabob's) brings before you something, if possible, more striking. He states, that, for this
their paper, he immediately handed over to these
gentlemen something very different from paper, --
that is, the receipt of a territorial revenue, of which,
it seems, they continued as long in possession as the
Nabob himself continued in possession of anything.
Their payments, therefore, not being to commence
before the end of four months, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed (unless they prove the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob
were made out of the revenues they had received from
his assignment. Thus they condescended to accumulate a debt of 160,0001. with an interest of twelve per
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 43
cent, in compensation for a lingering payment to the
Nabob of 160,0001. of his own money.
Still we have not the whole. About two years after
the assignment of those territorial revenues to these
gentlemen, the Nabob receives a remonstrance from
his chief manager in a principal province, of which
this is the tenor. " The entire revenue of those
districts is by your Highness's order set apart to
discharge the tunkaws [assignments] granted to the
Europeans. The gomastahs [agents] of Mr. Taylor
to Mr. De Fries are there in order to collect those
tunkaws; and as they receive all the revenue that is
collected, your Highness's troops have seven or eight
months' pay due, which they cannot receive, and are
thereby reduced to the greatest distress. In such
times it is highly necessary to provide for the sustenance of the troops, that they may be ready to exert themselves in the service of your Highness. "
Here, Sir, you see how these causes and effects act
upon one another. One body of troops mutinies for
want of pay; a debt is contracted to pay them; and
they still remain unpaid. A territory destined to pay
other troops is assigned for this debt; and these other
troops fall into the same state of indigence and mutiny with the first. Bond is paid by bond; arrear is turned into new arrear; usury engenders new usury;
mutiny, suspended in one quarter, starts up in another; until all the revenues and all the establishments are entangled into one inextricable knot of confusion,
from which they are only disengaged by being entirely
destroyed. In that state of confusion, in a very few
months after the date of the memorial I have just
read to you, things were found, when the Nabob's
troops, fainislled to feed English soucars, instead of
? ? ? ? 44 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
defending the country, joined the invaders, and deserted in entire bodies to Hyder Ali. *
The manner in which this transaction was carried
on shows that good examples are not easily forgot,
especially by those who are bred in a great school.
One of those splendid examples give me leave to
mention, at a somewhat more early period; because
one fraud furnishes light to the discovery of another,
and so on, until the whole secret of mysterious iniquity bursts upon you in a blaze of detection. The paper I shall read you is not on record. If you
please, you may take it on my word. It is a letter
written from one of undoubted information in Madras to Sir John Clavering, describing the practice that prevailed there, whilst the Company's allies were
under sale, during the time of Governor Winch's administration.
" One mode," says Clavering's correspondent, " of
amassing money at the Nabob's cost is curious. He
is generally in arrears to the Company. Here the
Governor, being cash-keeper, is generally on good
terms with the banker, who manages matters thus.
The Governor presses the Nabob for the balance due
from him; the Nabob flies to his banker for relief;
the banker engages to pay the money, and grants his
notes accordingly, which he puts in the cash-book as
ready money; the Nabob pays him an interest for it at
two and three per cent per mensern, till the tunkaws
he grants on the particular districts for it are paid.
Matters in the mean time are so managed that there
is no call for this money for the Company's service
* Mr. Dundas's 1st Report, pp. 26, 29, and Appendix, No. 2, 10,
18, for the mutinous state and desertion of the Nabob's troops for
want of pay. See also Report IV. of the salne committee.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 45
till the tunkaws become due. By this means not a
cash is advanced by the banker, though he receives a
heavy interest from the Nabob, which is divided as
lawful spoil. "
Here, Mr. Speaker, you have the whole art and
mystery, the true free-mason secret, of the profession
of soucaring; by which a few innocent, inexperienced
young Englishmen, such as Mr. Paul Benfield, for instance, without property upon which any one would lend to themselves a single shilling, are enabled at
once to take provinces in mortgage, to make princes
their debtors, and to become creditors for millions.
But it seems the right honorable gentleman's favorite soucar cavalry have proved the payment before the Mayor's Court at Madras! Have they so? Why,
then, defraud our anxiety and their characters of that
proof? Is it not enough that the charges which I
have laid before you have stood on record against
these poor injured gentlemen for eight years? Is it
not enough that they are in print by the orders of the
East India Company for five years? After these gentlemen have borne all the odium of this publication and all the indignation of the Directors with such
unexampled equanimity, now that they are at length
stimulated into feeling are you to deny them their
just relief? But will the right honorable gentleman
be pleased to tell us how they came not to give this
satisfaction to the Court of Directors, their lawful
masters, during all the eight years of this litigated
claim? Were they not bound, by every tie that can
bind man, to give them this satisfaction? This day,
for the first time, we hear of the proofs. But when
were these proofs offered? In what cause? Who
were the parties? Who inspected, who contested this
? ? ? ? 46 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS.
belated account? Let us see something to oppose
to the body of record which appears against them.
The Mayor's Court! the Mayor's Court! Pleasant!
Does not the honorable gentleman know that the
first corps of creditors (the creditors of 1767) stated
it as a sort of hardship to them, that they could not
have justice at Madras, from the impossibility of their
supporting their claims in the Mayor's Court? Why?
Because, say they, the members of that court were
themselves creditors, and therefore could not sit as
judges. * Are we ripe to say that no creditor under
similar circumstances was member of the court, when
the payment which is the ground of this cavalry debt
was put in proof? t Nay, are we not in a manner
compelled to conclude that the court was so constituted, when we know there is scarcely a man in Madras who has not some participation in these transactions? It is a shame to hear such proofs mentioned, instead of the honest, vigorous scrutiny which the
circumstances of such an affair so indispensably call
for.
But his Majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to
other scrutinies, have not been satisfied with author* Memorial from the creditors to the Governor and Council, 22d January, 1770.
t In the year 1778, Mr. James Call, one of the proprietors of this
specific debt, was actually mayor. (Appendix to 2d Rceport of Mr. Dundas's committee, No. 65. ) The only proof which appeared on the inquiry instituted in the General Court of 1781 was an affidavit of the lenders themselves, deposing (what nobody ever denied) that they had engaged and agreed to pay-not that they had paid-the sum of 160,0001. This was two years after the transaction; and the affidavit
is made before George Proctor, mayor, an attorney for certain of the old creditors. - Proceedings of the President and Council of Fort St. George, 22d February, 1779.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 47
izing the payment of this demand without such inquiry as the act has prescribed; but they have added
the arrear of twelve per cent interest, from the year
1777 to the year 1784, to make a new capital, raising
thereby 160 to 294,0001. Then they charge a new
twelve per cent on the whole from that period, for a
transaction in which it will be a miracle if a single
penny will be ever found really advanced from the
private stock of the pretended creditors.
In this manner, and at such an interest, the ministers have thought proper to dispose of 294,0001. of the
public revenues, for what is called the Cavalry Loan.
After dispatching this, the right honorable gentleman
leads to battle his last grand division, the consolidated
debt of 1777. But having exhausted all his panegyric
on the two first, he has nothing at all to say in favor
of the last. On the contrary, he admits that it was
contracted in defiance of the Company's orders, without even the pretended sanction of any pretended
representatives. Nobody, indeed, has yet been found
hardy enough to stand forth avowedly in its defence.
But it is little to the credit of the age, that what has
not plausibility enough to find an advocate has influence enough to obtain a protector. Could any man
expect to find that protector anywhere? But what
must every man think, when he finds that protector
in the chairman of the Committee of Secrecy,* who
had published to the House, and to the world, the
facts that condemn these debts, the orders that forbid the incurring of them, the dreadful consequences which attended them? Even in his official letter, when he tramples on his Parliamentary report, yet his general language is the same. Read the pref* Right Honorable Henry Dundas.
? ? ? ? 48 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS:
ace to this part of the ministerial arrangement, and
you would imagine that this debt was to be crushed,
with all the weight of indignation which could fall
from a vigilant guardian of the public treasury upon
those who attempted to rob it. What must be felt by
every man who has feeling, when, after such a thundering preamble of condemnation, this debt is ordered
to be paid without any sort of inquiry into its authenticity, -- without a single step taken to settle even
the amount of the demand, - without an attempt
so much as to ascertain the real persons claiming
a sum which rises in the accounts from one million
three hundred thousand pound sterling to two million
four hundred thousand pound, principal money,* --
without an attempt made to ascertain the proprietors,
of whom no list has ever yet been laid before the
Court of Directors, - of proprietors who are known to
be in a collusive shuffle, by which they never appear
to be the same in any two lists handed about for
their own particular purposes?
My honorable friend who made you the motion
has sufficiently exposed the nature of this debt. He
has stated to you, that its own agents, in the year
1781, in the arrangement they proposed to make at
Calcutta, were satisfied to have twenty-five per cent
at once struck off from the capital of a great part of
this debt, and prayed to have a provision made for
this reduced principal, without any interest at all.
This was an arrangement of their own, an arrangement made by those who best knew the true constitution of their own debt, who knew how little favor it merited,t and how little hopes they had to find any
* Appendix to the 4th Report of Mr. Dundas's committee, No 15.
t' "No sense of the common danger, in case of a war, can prevail
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 49
persons in authority abandoned enough to support it
as it stood.
But what corrupt men, in the fond imaginations
of a sanguine avarice, had not the confidence to propose, they have found a Chancellor of the Exchequer
in England hardy enough to undertake for them.
He has cheered their drooping spirits. He has
thanked the peculators for not despairing of their
commonwealth. He has told them they were too
modest. He has replaced the twenty-five per cent
which, in order to lighten themselves, they had abandoned in their conscious terror. Instead of cutting off
the interest, as they had themselves consented to do,
with the fourth of the capital, he has added the whole
growth of four years' usury of twelve per cent to
the first overgrown principal; and has again grafted
on this meliorated stock a perpetual annuity of six
per cent, to take place from the year 1781. Let no
man hereafter talk of the decaying energies of Nature.
All the acts and monuments in the records of peculation, the consolidated corruption of ages, the patterns
of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman
iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of
this single act. Never did Nero, in all the insolent
on him [the Nabob of Arcot] to furnish the Company with what is
absolutely necessary to assemble an army, though it is beyond a
doubt that money to a large amount is now hoarded up in his coffcrs at Chepauk; and tunkaws are granted to individuals, upon some of his most valuable countries, for payment of part of those debts which
he has contracted, and which certainly will not bear inspection, as neither
debtor nor creditors have ever had the confidence to submit the accounts to
our examination, though they expressed a wish to consolidate the
debts under the auspices of this government, agreeably to a plan
they had formed. " - Madras Consultations, 20th July, 1778. Mr.
Dundas's Appendix to 2nd Report, 143. See also last Appendix to
ditto Report, No. 376, B.
VOL. III. 4
? ? ? ? 50 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. prodigality of despotism, deal out to his praetorian guards a donation fit to be named with the largess showered down by the bounty of our Chancellor of the Exchequer on the faithful band of his Indian sepoys.
The right honorable gentleman* lets you freely
and voluntarily into the whole transaction. So perfectly has his conduct confounded his understanding, that he fairly tells you that through the course
of the whole business he has never conferred with
any but the agents of the pretended creditors. After this, do you want more to establish a secret
understanding with the parties, -- to fix, beyond a
doubt, their collusion and participation in a common
fraud?
If this were not enough, he has furnished you with
other presumptions that are not to be shaken. It is
one of the known indications of guilt to stagger and
prevaricate in a story, and to vary in the motives
that are assigned to conduct. Try these ministers
by this rule. In their official dispatch, they tell the
Presidency of Madras that they have established the
debt for two reasons: first, because the Nabob (the
party indebted) does not dispute it; secondly, because it is mischievous to keep it longer afloat,
and that the payment of the European creditors will
promote circulation in the country. These two motives (for the plainest reasons in the world) the right
honorable gentleman has this day thought fit totally
to abandon. In the first place, he rejects the authority of the Nabob of Arcot. It would, indeed, be pleasant to see him adhere to this exploded testimony. He next, upon grounds equally solid, abandons the
* Mr. Dundas.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 51
benefits of that circulation which was to be produced
by drawing out all the juices of the body. Laying
aside, or forgetting, these pretences of his dispatch,
he has just now assumed a principle totally different,
but to the full as extraordinary. He proceeds upon
a supposition that many of the claims may be fictitious. He then finds, that, in a case where many
valid and many fraudulent claims are blended together, the best course for their discrimination is
indiscriminately to establish them all. He trusts,
(I suppose,) as there may not be a fund sufficient
for every description of creditors, that the best warranted claimants will exert themselves in bringing
to light those debts which will not bear an inquiry.
What he will not do himself he is persuaded will
be done by others; and for this purpose he leaves to
any person a general power of excepting to the debt.
This total change of language and prevarication in
principle is enough, if it stood alone, to fix the presumption of unfair dealing. His dispatch assigns
motives of policy, concord, trade, and circulation:
his speech proclaims discord and litigations, and proposes, as the ultimate end, detection.
But he may shift his reasons, and wind and turn
as he will, confusion waits him at all his doubles.
Who will undertake this detection? Will the Nabob? But the right honorable gentleman has himself this moment told us that no prince of the country can by any motive be prevailed upon to
discover any fraud that is practised upon him by
the Company's servants. He says what (with the
exception of the complaint against the Cavalry Loan)
all the world knows to be true: and without that
prince's concurrence, what evidence can be had of
? ? ? ? 52 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
the fraud of any the smallest of these demands?
The ministers never authorized any person to enter
into his exchequer and to search his records. Why,
then, this shameful and insulting mockery of a pretended contest? Already contests for a preference have arisen among these rival bond-creditors. Has
not the Company itself struggled for a preference for
years, without any attempt at detection of the nature
of those debts with which they contended? Well is
the Nabob of Arcot attended to in the only specific
complaint he has ever made. He complained of unfair dealing in the Cavalry Loan.
It is fixed upon him with interest on interest; and this loan is excepted from all power of litigation.
This day, and not before, the right honorable gentleman thinks that the general establishment of all claims is the surest way of laying open the fraud of
some of them. In India this is a reach of deep policy. But what would be thought of this mode of acting on a demand upon the Treasury in England?
Instead of all this cunning, is there not one plain
way open,- that is, to put the burden of the proof on
those who make the demand? Ought not ministry
to have said to the creditors, " The person who admits your debt stands excepted to as evidence; he
stands charged as a collusive party, to hand over the
public revenues to you for sinister purposes. You
say, you have a demand of some millions on the Indian Treasury; prove that you have acted by lawful
authority; prove, at least, that your money has been
bond fide advanced; entitle yourself to my protection by the fairness and fulness of the communications you make"? Did an honest creditor ever refuse that reasonable and honest test?
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 53
There is little doubt that several individuals have
been seduced by the purveyors to the Nabob of Arcot to put their money (perhaps the whole of honest
and laborious earnings) into their hands, and that at
such high interest as, being condemned at law, leaves
them at the mercy of the great managers whom they
trusted. These seduced creditors are probably persons of no power or interest either in England or India, and may be just objects of compassion. By taking, in this arrangement, no measures for discrimination and discovery, the fraudulent and the fair are in the first instance confounded in one mass. The subsequent selection and distribution is left to the Nabob.
With him the agents and instruments of his corruption, whom he sees to be omnipotent in England, and
who may serve him in future, as they have done in
times past, will have precedence, if not an exclusive
preference. These leading interests domineer, and
have always domineered, over the whole. By this
arrangement, the persons seduced are made dependent on their seducers; honesty (comparative honesty
at least) must become of the party of fraud, and
must quit its proper character and its just claims, to
entitle itself to the alms of bribery and peculation.
But be these English creditors what they may, the
creditors most certainly not fraudulent are the natives, who are numerous and wretched indeed: by
exhausting the whole revenues of the Carnatic, nothing is left for them. They lent bond fide; in all probability they were even forced to lend, or to give goods
and service for the Nabob's obligations. They had no
trusts to carry to his market. They had no faith ot
alliances to sell. They had no nations to betray to
robbery and ruin. They had no lawful government
? ? ? ? 54 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
seditiously to overturn; nor had they a governor, to
whom it is owing that you exist in India, to deliver
over to captivity, and to death in a shameful prison. *
These were the merits of the principal part of the
debt of 1777, and the universally conceived causes
of its growth; and thus the unhappy natives are deprived of every hope of payment for their real debts, to make provision for the arrears of unsatisfied bribery and treason. You see in this instance that the presumption of guilt is not only no exception to the
demands on the public treasury, but with these ministers it is a necessary condition to their support. But that you may not think this preference solely
owing to their known contempt of the natives, who
ought with every generous mind to claim their first
charities, you will find the same rule religiously
observed with Europeans too. Attend, Sir, to this
decisive case. Since the beginning of the war, besides arrears of every kind, a bond-debt has been contracted at Madras, uncertain in its amount, but
represented from four hundred thousand pound to
a million sterling. It stands only at the low interest
of eight per cent. Of the legal authority on which
this debt was contracted, of its purposes for the very
being of the state, of its publicity and fairness, no
doubt has been entertained for a moment. For this
debt no sort of provision whatever has been made.
It is rejected as an outcast, whilst the whole undissipated attention of the minister has been employed for the discharge of claims entitled to his favor by
the merits we have seen.
I have endeavored to find out, if possible, the
amount of the whole of those demands, in order to
* Lord Pigot.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 55
see how much, supposing the country in a condition
to furnish the fund, may remain to satisfy the public
debt and the necessary establishments. But I have
been foiled in my attempt.
About one fourth, that is, about 220,0001. , of the
loan of 1767 remains unpaid. How much interest is
in arrear I could never discover: seven or eight years'
at least, which would make the whole of that debt
about 396,0001. This stock, which the ministers in
their instructions to the Governor of Madras state as
the least exceptionable, they have thought proper to
distinguish by a marked severity, leaving it the only
one on which the interest is not added to the principal
to beget a new interest.
The Cavalry Loan, by the operation of the same authority, is made up to 294,0001. ; and this 294,0001. , made up of principal and interest, is crowned with a
new interest of twelve per cent.
What the grand loan, the bribery loan of 1777,
may be is amongst the deepest mysteries of state.
It is probably the first debt ever assuming the title
of Consolidation that did not express what the amount
of the sum consolidated was. It is little less than a
contradiction in terms. In the debt of the year 1767
the sum was stated in the act of consolidation, and
made to amount to 880,0001. capital. When this
consolidation of 1777 was first announced at the Durbar, it was represented authentically at 2,400,0001. In that, or rather in a higher state, Sir Thomas Rumbold found and condemned it. * It afterwards fell
* In Sir Thomas Rumbold's letter to the Court of Directors,
March 15th, 1778, he represents it as higher, in the following manner:
-" How shall I paint to you my astonishment, on my arrival here,
when I was informed, that, independent of this four lacs of pagodas
? ? ? ? 56 SPEECH ON THE. NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
into such a terror as to sweat away a million of its
weight at once; and it sunk to 1,400,0001. * However, it never was without a resource for recruiting it
to its old plumpness. There was a sort of floating
debt of about four or five hundred thousand pounds
more ready to be added, as occasion should require.
In short, when you pressed this sensitive-plant, it
always contracted its dimensions. When the rude
hand of inquiry was withdrawn, it expanded in all
the luxuriant vigor of its original vegetation. In the
treaty of 1781, the whole of the Nabob's debt to private Europeans is by Mr. Sulivan, agent to the Nabob and his creditors, stated at 2,800,0001. , which, if
the Cavalry Loan and the remains of the debt of 1767
be subtracted, leaves it nearly at the amount originally declared at the Durbar in 1777: but then
[the Cavalry Loan], independent of the Nabob's debt to his old creditors, and the money due to the Company, he had contracted a debt
to the enormous amount of sixty-three lacs of pagodas [2,520,0001. ].
I mention this circumstance to you with horror; for the creditors
being in general servants of the Company renders my task, on the part
of the Company, diicult and invidious. " " I have freed the sanction
of this government from so corrupt a transaction. It is in my mind
the most venal of all proceedings to give the Company's protection to
debts that cannot bear the light; and though it appears exceedingly
alarming, that a country on which you are to depend for resources
should be so involved as to be nearly three years' revenue in debt, -
in a country, too, where one year's revenue can never be called secure,
by men who know anything of the politics of this part of India. "' I think it proper to mention to you, that, although the Nabob reports
his private debt to amount to upwards of sixty lacs, yet I understand that
it is not quite so much. " Afterwards Sir Thomas Rumbold recommended this debt to the favorable attention of the Company, but without any sufficient reason for his change of disposition. However, he went no further.
* Nabob's proposals, November 25th, 1778; and memorial of the
creditors, March 1st, 1779.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 57
there is a private instruction to Mr. Sulivan, which,
it seems, will reduce it again to the lower standard of
1,400,0001.
Failing in all my attempts, by a direct account, to
ascertain the extent of the capital claimed, (where in
all probability no capital was ever advanced,) I endeavored, if possible, to discover it by the interest
which was to be paid. For that purpose, I looked to
the several agreements for assigning the territories of
the Carnatic to secure the principal and interest of this
debt. In one of them,* I found, in a sort of postscript,
by way of an additional remark, (not in the body of
the obligation,) the debt represented at 1,400,0001. :
but when I computed the sums to be paid for interest
by instalments in another paper, I found they produced
an interest of two millions, at twelve per cent; and
the assignment supposed, that, if these instalments
might exceed, they might also fall short of, the real
provision for that interest. f Another instalment-bond
was afterwards granted: in that bond the interest exactly tallies with a capital of 1,400,0001. :: but pursuing this capital through the correspondence, I lost sight of it again, and it was asserted that this instalment-bond was considerably short of the interest that
ought to be computed to the time mentioned. ~
Here are, therefore, two statements of equal authority, differing at least a million from each other;
and as neither persons claiming, nor any special sum
as belonging to each particular claimant, is ascertained
* Nabob's proposals to his new consolidated creditors, November
25th, 1778.
t Paper signed by the Nabob, 6th January, 1780.
t Kistbundi to July 31, 1780.
~ Governor's letter to the Nabob, 25th July, 1779.
? ? ? ? 58 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
in the instruments of consolidation, or in the instalment-bonds, a large scope was left to throw in any sums for any persons, as their merits in advancing
the interest of that loan might require; a power was
also left for reduction, in case a harder hand, or more
scanty funds, might be found to require it. Stronger
grounds for a presumption of fraud never appeared
in any transaction. But the ministers, faithful to
the plan of the interested persons, whom alone they
thought fit to confer with on this occasion, have
ordered the payment of the whole mass of these
unknown, unliquidated sums, without an attempt to
ascertain them. On this conduct, Sir, I leave you to
make your own reflections.
It is. impossible (at least I have found it impossible) to fix on the real amount of the pretended debts with which your ministers have thought proper to
load the Carnatic. They are obscure; they shun inquiry; they are enormous. That is all you know of them.
That you may judge what chance any honorable
and useful end of government has for a provision
that comes in for the leavings of these gluttonous
demands, I must take it on myself to bring before
you the real condition of that abused, insulted,
racked, and ruined country; though in truth my
mind revolts from it, though you will hear it with
horror, and I confess I tremble when I think on
these awful and confounding dispensations of Providence. I shall first trouble you with a few words as to the cause.
The great fortunes made in India, in the beginnings of conquest, naturally excited an emulation
in all the parts and through the whole succession
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT' S DEBTS. 59
of the Company's service. But in the Company it
gave rise to other sentiments. They did not find the
new channels of acquisition flow with equal riches to
them. On the contrary, the high flood-tide of private emolument was generally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. They began also to fear that the fortune of war might take away what the fortune of war had given. Wars were accordingly discouraged by
repeated injunctions and menaces: and that the servants might not be bribed into them by the native princes, they were strictly forbidden to take any
money whatsoever from their hands. But vehement
passion is ingenious in resources. The Company's
servants were not only stimulated, but better instructed by the prohibition. They soon fell upon a contrivance which answered their purposes far better
than the methods which were forbidden: though in
this also they violated an ancient, but they thought,
an abrogated order. They reversed their proceedings. Instead of receiving presents, they made loans.
Instead of carrying on wars in their own name, they
contrived an authority, at once irresistible and irresponsible, in whose name they might ravage at pleasure; and being thus freed from all restraint, they indulged themselves in the most extravagant speculations of plunder. The cabal of creditors who have
been the object of the late bountiful grant from his
Majesty's ministers, in order to possess themselves,
under the name of creditors and assignees, of every
country in India, as fast as it should be conquered,
inspired into the mind of the Nabob of Arcot (then a
dependaI;t on the Company of the humblest order) a
scheme of the most wild and desperate ambition that
I believe ever was admitted into the thoughts of a
? ? ? ? 60 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
man so situated. * First, they persuaded him to con.
sider himself as a principal member in the political
system of Europe. In the next place, they held out to
him, and he readily imbibed, the idea of the general
empire of flindostan. As a preliminary to this undertaking, they prevailed on him to propose a tripartite
division of that vast country: one part to the Company; another to the Mahrattas; and the third to himself. To himself he reserved all the southern part of the great peninsula, comprehended under the general name of the Deccan.
On this scheme of their servants, the Company was
to appear in the Carnatic in no other light than as
a contractor for the provision of armies, and the hire
of mercenaries for his use and under his direction.
This disposition was to be secured by the Nabob's
putting himself under the guaranty of France, and,
by the means of that rival nation, preventing the
English forever from assuming an equality, much
less a superiority, in the Carnatic. In pursuance -of
this treasonable project, (treasonable on the part of
the English,) they extinguished the Company as a
sovereign power in that part of India; they withdrew the Company's garrisons out of all the forts
and strongholds of the Carnatic; they declined to
receive the ambassadors from foreign courts, and remitted them to the Nabob of Arcot; they fell upon,
and totally destroyed, the oldest ally of the Company,
the king of Tanjore, and plundered the country to
* Report of the Select Committee, Madras Consultations, January
7, 1771. See also papers published by the order of the Court of Directors in 1776; and Lord Macartney's correspondence with Mr.
Hastings and the Nabob of Arcot. See also Mr. Dundas's Appendix,
No 376, B. Nabob's propositions through Mr. Sulivan and Assam
Khan, Art. 6, and indeed the whole.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 61
the amount of near five millions sterling; one after another, in the Nabob's name, but with English
force, they brought into a miserable servitude all
the princes and great independent nobility of a vast
country. * In proportion to these treasons and violences, which ruined the people, the fund of the Nabob's debt grew and flourished. Among the victims to this magnificent plan of universal plunder, worthy of the heroic avarice of the
projectors, you have all heard (and he has made
himself to be well remembered) of an Indian chief
called Hyder Ali Khan. This man possessed the
western, as the Company, under the name of the Nabob of Arcot, does the eastern division of the Carnatic.
It was among the leading measures in the design
of this cabal (according to their own emphatic language) to extirpate this Hyder Ali. t They declared
the Nabob of Arcot to be his sovereign, and himself
to be a rebel, and publicly invested their instrument
with the sovereignty of the kingdom of Mysore. But
their victim was not of the passive kind. They were
soon obliged to conclude a treaty of peace and close
alliance with this rebel, at the gates of Madras. Both
before and since that treaty, every principle of policy
* ", The principal object of the expedition is, to get money from
Tanjore to pay the Nabob's debt: if a surplus, to be applied in discharge of the Nabob's debts to his private creditors. " (Consultations, March 20, 1771; and for further lights, Consultations, 12th June,
1771. ), We are alarmed lest this debt to individuals should have
been the real motive for the aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali [the
Nabob of Arcot], and that we are plunged into a war to put him in
possession of the Mysore revenues for the discharge of the debt. " -Letter from the Directors, March 17, 1769.
t Letter from the Nabob, May 1st, 1768; and ditto, 24th April,
1770, 1st October; ditto, 16th September, 1772, 16th March, 1773.
? ? ? ? 62 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
pointed out this power as a natural alliance; and on
his part it was courted by every sort of amicable
office. But the cabinet council of English creditors
would not suffer their Nabob of Arcot to sign the
treaty, nor even to give to a prince at least his
equal the ordinary titles of respect and courtesy. *
From that time forward, a continued plot was carried on within the divan, black and white, of the Nabob of Arcot, for the destruction of Hyder Ali.
As to the outward members of the double, or rather
treble government of Madras, which had signed the
treaty, they were always prevented by some overruling influence (which they do not describe, but
which cannot be misunderstood) from performing
what justice and interest combined so evidently to
enforce. When at length iyder Ali found that he had to
do with men who either would sign no convention,
or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and
who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved,
in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such
things, to leave the whole Carnatic an everlasting
monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those against
whom the faith which holds the moral elements of
the world together was no protection. He became at
length so confident of his force, so collected in his
might, that he made no secret whatsoever of his
* Letter from the Presidency at Madras to the Court of Directors,
27th June, 1769.
t Mr. Dundas's committee, Report I. , Appendix, No. 29.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 63
dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes
with every enemy and every rival, who buried their
mutual animosities in their common detestation
against the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he
drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the materials of
fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of
woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart
conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell.
All the horrors of war before known or heard of
were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants,
flying from their flaming villages, in part were
slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age,
to the respect of rank or sacredness of function,
fathers torn from children, husbands from wives,
enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst
the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling
of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an
unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to
evade this tempest fled to the walled cities; but escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.
read to you is an extract of a letter from the Nabob
of the Carnatic to Governor Rumbold, dated the
22d, and received the 24th of March, 1779. *
Suppose his Highness not to be well broken in to
* See further Consultations, 3d February, 1778.
? ? ? ? 42 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
things of this kind, it must, indeed, surprise so known
and established a bond-vender as the Nabob of Arcot,
one who keeps himself the largest bond-warehouse
in the world, to find that he was now to receive in
kind: not to take money for his obligations, but to
give his bond in exchange for the bond of Messieurs
Taylor, Majendie, and Call, and to pay, besides, a
good, smart interest, legally twelve per cent, (in reality, perhaps, twenty or twenty-four per cent,) for this exchange of paper. But his troops were not to be
so paid, or so disbanded. They wanted bread, and
could not live by cutting and shuffling of bonds.
The Nabob still kept the troops in service, and was
obliged to continue, as you have seen, the whole expense to exonerate himself from which he became indebted to the soucars.
Had it stood here, the transaction would have been
of the most audacious strain of fraud and usury perhaps ever before discovered, whatever might have been practised and concealed. But the same authority (I mean the Nabob's) brings before you something, if possible, more striking. He states, that, for this
their paper, he immediately handed over to these
gentlemen something very different from paper, --
that is, the receipt of a territorial revenue, of which,
it seems, they continued as long in possession as the
Nabob himself continued in possession of anything.
Their payments, therefore, not being to commence
before the end of four months, and not being completed in two years, it must be presumed (unless they prove the contrary) that their payments to the Nabob
were made out of the revenues they had received from
his assignment. Thus they condescended to accumulate a debt of 160,0001. with an interest of twelve per
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 43
cent, in compensation for a lingering payment to the
Nabob of 160,0001. of his own money.
Still we have not the whole. About two years after
the assignment of those territorial revenues to these
gentlemen, the Nabob receives a remonstrance from
his chief manager in a principal province, of which
this is the tenor. " The entire revenue of those
districts is by your Highness's order set apart to
discharge the tunkaws [assignments] granted to the
Europeans. The gomastahs [agents] of Mr. Taylor
to Mr. De Fries are there in order to collect those
tunkaws; and as they receive all the revenue that is
collected, your Highness's troops have seven or eight
months' pay due, which they cannot receive, and are
thereby reduced to the greatest distress. In such
times it is highly necessary to provide for the sustenance of the troops, that they may be ready to exert themselves in the service of your Highness. "
Here, Sir, you see how these causes and effects act
upon one another. One body of troops mutinies for
want of pay; a debt is contracted to pay them; and
they still remain unpaid. A territory destined to pay
other troops is assigned for this debt; and these other
troops fall into the same state of indigence and mutiny with the first. Bond is paid by bond; arrear is turned into new arrear; usury engenders new usury;
mutiny, suspended in one quarter, starts up in another; until all the revenues and all the establishments are entangled into one inextricable knot of confusion,
from which they are only disengaged by being entirely
destroyed. In that state of confusion, in a very few
months after the date of the memorial I have just
read to you, things were found, when the Nabob's
troops, fainislled to feed English soucars, instead of
? ? ? ? 44 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
defending the country, joined the invaders, and deserted in entire bodies to Hyder Ali. *
The manner in which this transaction was carried
on shows that good examples are not easily forgot,
especially by those who are bred in a great school.
One of those splendid examples give me leave to
mention, at a somewhat more early period; because
one fraud furnishes light to the discovery of another,
and so on, until the whole secret of mysterious iniquity bursts upon you in a blaze of detection. The paper I shall read you is not on record. If you
please, you may take it on my word. It is a letter
written from one of undoubted information in Madras to Sir John Clavering, describing the practice that prevailed there, whilst the Company's allies were
under sale, during the time of Governor Winch's administration.
" One mode," says Clavering's correspondent, " of
amassing money at the Nabob's cost is curious. He
is generally in arrears to the Company. Here the
Governor, being cash-keeper, is generally on good
terms with the banker, who manages matters thus.
The Governor presses the Nabob for the balance due
from him; the Nabob flies to his banker for relief;
the banker engages to pay the money, and grants his
notes accordingly, which he puts in the cash-book as
ready money; the Nabob pays him an interest for it at
two and three per cent per mensern, till the tunkaws
he grants on the particular districts for it are paid.
Matters in the mean time are so managed that there
is no call for this money for the Company's service
* Mr. Dundas's 1st Report, pp. 26, 29, and Appendix, No. 2, 10,
18, for the mutinous state and desertion of the Nabob's troops for
want of pay. See also Report IV. of the salne committee.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 45
till the tunkaws become due. By this means not a
cash is advanced by the banker, though he receives a
heavy interest from the Nabob, which is divided as
lawful spoil. "
Here, Mr. Speaker, you have the whole art and
mystery, the true free-mason secret, of the profession
of soucaring; by which a few innocent, inexperienced
young Englishmen, such as Mr. Paul Benfield, for instance, without property upon which any one would lend to themselves a single shilling, are enabled at
once to take provinces in mortgage, to make princes
their debtors, and to become creditors for millions.
But it seems the right honorable gentleman's favorite soucar cavalry have proved the payment before the Mayor's Court at Madras! Have they so? Why,
then, defraud our anxiety and their characters of that
proof? Is it not enough that the charges which I
have laid before you have stood on record against
these poor injured gentlemen for eight years? Is it
not enough that they are in print by the orders of the
East India Company for five years? After these gentlemen have borne all the odium of this publication and all the indignation of the Directors with such
unexampled equanimity, now that they are at length
stimulated into feeling are you to deny them their
just relief? But will the right honorable gentleman
be pleased to tell us how they came not to give this
satisfaction to the Court of Directors, their lawful
masters, during all the eight years of this litigated
claim? Were they not bound, by every tie that can
bind man, to give them this satisfaction? This day,
for the first time, we hear of the proofs. But when
were these proofs offered? In what cause? Who
were the parties? Who inspected, who contested this
? ? ? ? 46 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS.
belated account? Let us see something to oppose
to the body of record which appears against them.
The Mayor's Court! the Mayor's Court! Pleasant!
Does not the honorable gentleman know that the
first corps of creditors (the creditors of 1767) stated
it as a sort of hardship to them, that they could not
have justice at Madras, from the impossibility of their
supporting their claims in the Mayor's Court? Why?
Because, say they, the members of that court were
themselves creditors, and therefore could not sit as
judges. * Are we ripe to say that no creditor under
similar circumstances was member of the court, when
the payment which is the ground of this cavalry debt
was put in proof? t Nay, are we not in a manner
compelled to conclude that the court was so constituted, when we know there is scarcely a man in Madras who has not some participation in these transactions? It is a shame to hear such proofs mentioned, instead of the honest, vigorous scrutiny which the
circumstances of such an affair so indispensably call
for.
But his Majesty's ministers, indulgent enough to
other scrutinies, have not been satisfied with author* Memorial from the creditors to the Governor and Council, 22d January, 1770.
t In the year 1778, Mr. James Call, one of the proprietors of this
specific debt, was actually mayor. (Appendix to 2d Rceport of Mr. Dundas's committee, No. 65. ) The only proof which appeared on the inquiry instituted in the General Court of 1781 was an affidavit of the lenders themselves, deposing (what nobody ever denied) that they had engaged and agreed to pay-not that they had paid-the sum of 160,0001. This was two years after the transaction; and the affidavit
is made before George Proctor, mayor, an attorney for certain of the old creditors. - Proceedings of the President and Council of Fort St. George, 22d February, 1779.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 47
izing the payment of this demand without such inquiry as the act has prescribed; but they have added
the arrear of twelve per cent interest, from the year
1777 to the year 1784, to make a new capital, raising
thereby 160 to 294,0001. Then they charge a new
twelve per cent on the whole from that period, for a
transaction in which it will be a miracle if a single
penny will be ever found really advanced from the
private stock of the pretended creditors.
In this manner, and at such an interest, the ministers have thought proper to dispose of 294,0001. of the
public revenues, for what is called the Cavalry Loan.
After dispatching this, the right honorable gentleman
leads to battle his last grand division, the consolidated
debt of 1777. But having exhausted all his panegyric
on the two first, he has nothing at all to say in favor
of the last. On the contrary, he admits that it was
contracted in defiance of the Company's orders, without even the pretended sanction of any pretended
representatives. Nobody, indeed, has yet been found
hardy enough to stand forth avowedly in its defence.
But it is little to the credit of the age, that what has
not plausibility enough to find an advocate has influence enough to obtain a protector. Could any man
expect to find that protector anywhere? But what
must every man think, when he finds that protector
in the chairman of the Committee of Secrecy,* who
had published to the House, and to the world, the
facts that condemn these debts, the orders that forbid the incurring of them, the dreadful consequences which attended them? Even in his official letter, when he tramples on his Parliamentary report, yet his general language is the same. Read the pref* Right Honorable Henry Dundas.
? ? ? ? 48 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS:
ace to this part of the ministerial arrangement, and
you would imagine that this debt was to be crushed,
with all the weight of indignation which could fall
from a vigilant guardian of the public treasury upon
those who attempted to rob it. What must be felt by
every man who has feeling, when, after such a thundering preamble of condemnation, this debt is ordered
to be paid without any sort of inquiry into its authenticity, -- without a single step taken to settle even
the amount of the demand, - without an attempt
so much as to ascertain the real persons claiming
a sum which rises in the accounts from one million
three hundred thousand pound sterling to two million
four hundred thousand pound, principal money,* --
without an attempt made to ascertain the proprietors,
of whom no list has ever yet been laid before the
Court of Directors, - of proprietors who are known to
be in a collusive shuffle, by which they never appear
to be the same in any two lists handed about for
their own particular purposes?
My honorable friend who made you the motion
has sufficiently exposed the nature of this debt. He
has stated to you, that its own agents, in the year
1781, in the arrangement they proposed to make at
Calcutta, were satisfied to have twenty-five per cent
at once struck off from the capital of a great part of
this debt, and prayed to have a provision made for
this reduced principal, without any interest at all.
This was an arrangement of their own, an arrangement made by those who best knew the true constitution of their own debt, who knew how little favor it merited,t and how little hopes they had to find any
* Appendix to the 4th Report of Mr. Dundas's committee, No 15.
t' "No sense of the common danger, in case of a war, can prevail
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 49
persons in authority abandoned enough to support it
as it stood.
But what corrupt men, in the fond imaginations
of a sanguine avarice, had not the confidence to propose, they have found a Chancellor of the Exchequer
in England hardy enough to undertake for them.
He has cheered their drooping spirits. He has
thanked the peculators for not despairing of their
commonwealth. He has told them they were too
modest. He has replaced the twenty-five per cent
which, in order to lighten themselves, they had abandoned in their conscious terror. Instead of cutting off
the interest, as they had themselves consented to do,
with the fourth of the capital, he has added the whole
growth of four years' usury of twelve per cent to
the first overgrown principal; and has again grafted
on this meliorated stock a perpetual annuity of six
per cent, to take place from the year 1781. Let no
man hereafter talk of the decaying energies of Nature.
All the acts and monuments in the records of peculation, the consolidated corruption of ages, the patterns
of exemplary plunder in the heroic times of Roman
iniquity, never equalled the gigantic corruption of
this single act. Never did Nero, in all the insolent
on him [the Nabob of Arcot] to furnish the Company with what is
absolutely necessary to assemble an army, though it is beyond a
doubt that money to a large amount is now hoarded up in his coffcrs at Chepauk; and tunkaws are granted to individuals, upon some of his most valuable countries, for payment of part of those debts which
he has contracted, and which certainly will not bear inspection, as neither
debtor nor creditors have ever had the confidence to submit the accounts to
our examination, though they expressed a wish to consolidate the
debts under the auspices of this government, agreeably to a plan
they had formed. " - Madras Consultations, 20th July, 1778. Mr.
Dundas's Appendix to 2nd Report, 143. See also last Appendix to
ditto Report, No. 376, B.
VOL. III. 4
? ? ? ? 50 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. prodigality of despotism, deal out to his praetorian guards a donation fit to be named with the largess showered down by the bounty of our Chancellor of the Exchequer on the faithful band of his Indian sepoys.
The right honorable gentleman* lets you freely
and voluntarily into the whole transaction. So perfectly has his conduct confounded his understanding, that he fairly tells you that through the course
of the whole business he has never conferred with
any but the agents of the pretended creditors. After this, do you want more to establish a secret
understanding with the parties, -- to fix, beyond a
doubt, their collusion and participation in a common
fraud?
If this were not enough, he has furnished you with
other presumptions that are not to be shaken. It is
one of the known indications of guilt to stagger and
prevaricate in a story, and to vary in the motives
that are assigned to conduct. Try these ministers
by this rule. In their official dispatch, they tell the
Presidency of Madras that they have established the
debt for two reasons: first, because the Nabob (the
party indebted) does not dispute it; secondly, because it is mischievous to keep it longer afloat,
and that the payment of the European creditors will
promote circulation in the country. These two motives (for the plainest reasons in the world) the right
honorable gentleman has this day thought fit totally
to abandon. In the first place, he rejects the authority of the Nabob of Arcot. It would, indeed, be pleasant to see him adhere to this exploded testimony. He next, upon grounds equally solid, abandons the
* Mr. Dundas.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 51
benefits of that circulation which was to be produced
by drawing out all the juices of the body. Laying
aside, or forgetting, these pretences of his dispatch,
he has just now assumed a principle totally different,
but to the full as extraordinary. He proceeds upon
a supposition that many of the claims may be fictitious. He then finds, that, in a case where many
valid and many fraudulent claims are blended together, the best course for their discrimination is
indiscriminately to establish them all. He trusts,
(I suppose,) as there may not be a fund sufficient
for every description of creditors, that the best warranted claimants will exert themselves in bringing
to light those debts which will not bear an inquiry.
What he will not do himself he is persuaded will
be done by others; and for this purpose he leaves to
any person a general power of excepting to the debt.
This total change of language and prevarication in
principle is enough, if it stood alone, to fix the presumption of unfair dealing. His dispatch assigns
motives of policy, concord, trade, and circulation:
his speech proclaims discord and litigations, and proposes, as the ultimate end, detection.
But he may shift his reasons, and wind and turn
as he will, confusion waits him at all his doubles.
Who will undertake this detection? Will the Nabob? But the right honorable gentleman has himself this moment told us that no prince of the country can by any motive be prevailed upon to
discover any fraud that is practised upon him by
the Company's servants. He says what (with the
exception of the complaint against the Cavalry Loan)
all the world knows to be true: and without that
prince's concurrence, what evidence can be had of
? ? ? ? 52 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
the fraud of any the smallest of these demands?
The ministers never authorized any person to enter
into his exchequer and to search his records. Why,
then, this shameful and insulting mockery of a pretended contest? Already contests for a preference have arisen among these rival bond-creditors. Has
not the Company itself struggled for a preference for
years, without any attempt at detection of the nature
of those debts with which they contended? Well is
the Nabob of Arcot attended to in the only specific
complaint he has ever made. He complained of unfair dealing in the Cavalry Loan.
It is fixed upon him with interest on interest; and this loan is excepted from all power of litigation.
This day, and not before, the right honorable gentleman thinks that the general establishment of all claims is the surest way of laying open the fraud of
some of them. In India this is a reach of deep policy. But what would be thought of this mode of acting on a demand upon the Treasury in England?
Instead of all this cunning, is there not one plain
way open,- that is, to put the burden of the proof on
those who make the demand? Ought not ministry
to have said to the creditors, " The person who admits your debt stands excepted to as evidence; he
stands charged as a collusive party, to hand over the
public revenues to you for sinister purposes. You
say, you have a demand of some millions on the Indian Treasury; prove that you have acted by lawful
authority; prove, at least, that your money has been
bond fide advanced; entitle yourself to my protection by the fairness and fulness of the communications you make"? Did an honest creditor ever refuse that reasonable and honest test?
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 53
There is little doubt that several individuals have
been seduced by the purveyors to the Nabob of Arcot to put their money (perhaps the whole of honest
and laborious earnings) into their hands, and that at
such high interest as, being condemned at law, leaves
them at the mercy of the great managers whom they
trusted. These seduced creditors are probably persons of no power or interest either in England or India, and may be just objects of compassion. By taking, in this arrangement, no measures for discrimination and discovery, the fraudulent and the fair are in the first instance confounded in one mass. The subsequent selection and distribution is left to the Nabob.
With him the agents and instruments of his corruption, whom he sees to be omnipotent in England, and
who may serve him in future, as they have done in
times past, will have precedence, if not an exclusive
preference. These leading interests domineer, and
have always domineered, over the whole. By this
arrangement, the persons seduced are made dependent on their seducers; honesty (comparative honesty
at least) must become of the party of fraud, and
must quit its proper character and its just claims, to
entitle itself to the alms of bribery and peculation.
But be these English creditors what they may, the
creditors most certainly not fraudulent are the natives, who are numerous and wretched indeed: by
exhausting the whole revenues of the Carnatic, nothing is left for them. They lent bond fide; in all probability they were even forced to lend, or to give goods
and service for the Nabob's obligations. They had no
trusts to carry to his market. They had no faith ot
alliances to sell. They had no nations to betray to
robbery and ruin. They had no lawful government
? ? ? ? 54 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
seditiously to overturn; nor had they a governor, to
whom it is owing that you exist in India, to deliver
over to captivity, and to death in a shameful prison. *
These were the merits of the principal part of the
debt of 1777, and the universally conceived causes
of its growth; and thus the unhappy natives are deprived of every hope of payment for their real debts, to make provision for the arrears of unsatisfied bribery and treason. You see in this instance that the presumption of guilt is not only no exception to the
demands on the public treasury, but with these ministers it is a necessary condition to their support. But that you may not think this preference solely
owing to their known contempt of the natives, who
ought with every generous mind to claim their first
charities, you will find the same rule religiously
observed with Europeans too. Attend, Sir, to this
decisive case. Since the beginning of the war, besides arrears of every kind, a bond-debt has been contracted at Madras, uncertain in its amount, but
represented from four hundred thousand pound to
a million sterling. It stands only at the low interest
of eight per cent. Of the legal authority on which
this debt was contracted, of its purposes for the very
being of the state, of its publicity and fairness, no
doubt has been entertained for a moment. For this
debt no sort of provision whatever has been made.
It is rejected as an outcast, whilst the whole undissipated attention of the minister has been employed for the discharge of claims entitled to his favor by
the merits we have seen.
I have endeavored to find out, if possible, the
amount of the whole of those demands, in order to
* Lord Pigot.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 55
see how much, supposing the country in a condition
to furnish the fund, may remain to satisfy the public
debt and the necessary establishments. But I have
been foiled in my attempt.
About one fourth, that is, about 220,0001. , of the
loan of 1767 remains unpaid. How much interest is
in arrear I could never discover: seven or eight years'
at least, which would make the whole of that debt
about 396,0001. This stock, which the ministers in
their instructions to the Governor of Madras state as
the least exceptionable, they have thought proper to
distinguish by a marked severity, leaving it the only
one on which the interest is not added to the principal
to beget a new interest.
The Cavalry Loan, by the operation of the same authority, is made up to 294,0001. ; and this 294,0001. , made up of principal and interest, is crowned with a
new interest of twelve per cent.
What the grand loan, the bribery loan of 1777,
may be is amongst the deepest mysteries of state.
It is probably the first debt ever assuming the title
of Consolidation that did not express what the amount
of the sum consolidated was. It is little less than a
contradiction in terms. In the debt of the year 1767
the sum was stated in the act of consolidation, and
made to amount to 880,0001. capital. When this
consolidation of 1777 was first announced at the Durbar, it was represented authentically at 2,400,0001. In that, or rather in a higher state, Sir Thomas Rumbold found and condemned it. * It afterwards fell
* In Sir Thomas Rumbold's letter to the Court of Directors,
March 15th, 1778, he represents it as higher, in the following manner:
-" How shall I paint to you my astonishment, on my arrival here,
when I was informed, that, independent of this four lacs of pagodas
? ? ? ? 56 SPEECH ON THE. NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
into such a terror as to sweat away a million of its
weight at once; and it sunk to 1,400,0001. * However, it never was without a resource for recruiting it
to its old plumpness. There was a sort of floating
debt of about four or five hundred thousand pounds
more ready to be added, as occasion should require.
In short, when you pressed this sensitive-plant, it
always contracted its dimensions. When the rude
hand of inquiry was withdrawn, it expanded in all
the luxuriant vigor of its original vegetation. In the
treaty of 1781, the whole of the Nabob's debt to private Europeans is by Mr. Sulivan, agent to the Nabob and his creditors, stated at 2,800,0001. , which, if
the Cavalry Loan and the remains of the debt of 1767
be subtracted, leaves it nearly at the amount originally declared at the Durbar in 1777: but then
[the Cavalry Loan], independent of the Nabob's debt to his old creditors, and the money due to the Company, he had contracted a debt
to the enormous amount of sixty-three lacs of pagodas [2,520,0001. ].
I mention this circumstance to you with horror; for the creditors
being in general servants of the Company renders my task, on the part
of the Company, diicult and invidious. " " I have freed the sanction
of this government from so corrupt a transaction. It is in my mind
the most venal of all proceedings to give the Company's protection to
debts that cannot bear the light; and though it appears exceedingly
alarming, that a country on which you are to depend for resources
should be so involved as to be nearly three years' revenue in debt, -
in a country, too, where one year's revenue can never be called secure,
by men who know anything of the politics of this part of India. "' I think it proper to mention to you, that, although the Nabob reports
his private debt to amount to upwards of sixty lacs, yet I understand that
it is not quite so much. " Afterwards Sir Thomas Rumbold recommended this debt to the favorable attention of the Company, but without any sufficient reason for his change of disposition. However, he went no further.
* Nabob's proposals, November 25th, 1778; and memorial of the
creditors, March 1st, 1779.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 57
there is a private instruction to Mr. Sulivan, which,
it seems, will reduce it again to the lower standard of
1,400,0001.
Failing in all my attempts, by a direct account, to
ascertain the extent of the capital claimed, (where in
all probability no capital was ever advanced,) I endeavored, if possible, to discover it by the interest
which was to be paid. For that purpose, I looked to
the several agreements for assigning the territories of
the Carnatic to secure the principal and interest of this
debt. In one of them,* I found, in a sort of postscript,
by way of an additional remark, (not in the body of
the obligation,) the debt represented at 1,400,0001. :
but when I computed the sums to be paid for interest
by instalments in another paper, I found they produced
an interest of two millions, at twelve per cent; and
the assignment supposed, that, if these instalments
might exceed, they might also fall short of, the real
provision for that interest. f Another instalment-bond
was afterwards granted: in that bond the interest exactly tallies with a capital of 1,400,0001. :: but pursuing this capital through the correspondence, I lost sight of it again, and it was asserted that this instalment-bond was considerably short of the interest that
ought to be computed to the time mentioned. ~
Here are, therefore, two statements of equal authority, differing at least a million from each other;
and as neither persons claiming, nor any special sum
as belonging to each particular claimant, is ascertained
* Nabob's proposals to his new consolidated creditors, November
25th, 1778.
t Paper signed by the Nabob, 6th January, 1780.
t Kistbundi to July 31, 1780.
~ Governor's letter to the Nabob, 25th July, 1779.
? ? ? ? 58 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
in the instruments of consolidation, or in the instalment-bonds, a large scope was left to throw in any sums for any persons, as their merits in advancing
the interest of that loan might require; a power was
also left for reduction, in case a harder hand, or more
scanty funds, might be found to require it. Stronger
grounds for a presumption of fraud never appeared
in any transaction. But the ministers, faithful to
the plan of the interested persons, whom alone they
thought fit to confer with on this occasion, have
ordered the payment of the whole mass of these
unknown, unliquidated sums, without an attempt to
ascertain them. On this conduct, Sir, I leave you to
make your own reflections.
It is. impossible (at least I have found it impossible) to fix on the real amount of the pretended debts with which your ministers have thought proper to
load the Carnatic. They are obscure; they shun inquiry; they are enormous. That is all you know of them.
That you may judge what chance any honorable
and useful end of government has for a provision
that comes in for the leavings of these gluttonous
demands, I must take it on myself to bring before
you the real condition of that abused, insulted,
racked, and ruined country; though in truth my
mind revolts from it, though you will hear it with
horror, and I confess I tremble when I think on
these awful and confounding dispensations of Providence. I shall first trouble you with a few words as to the cause.
The great fortunes made in India, in the beginnings of conquest, naturally excited an emulation
in all the parts and through the whole succession
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT' S DEBTS. 59
of the Company's service. But in the Company it
gave rise to other sentiments. They did not find the
new channels of acquisition flow with equal riches to
them. On the contrary, the high flood-tide of private emolument was generally in the lowest ebb of their affairs. They began also to fear that the fortune of war might take away what the fortune of war had given. Wars were accordingly discouraged by
repeated injunctions and menaces: and that the servants might not be bribed into them by the native princes, they were strictly forbidden to take any
money whatsoever from their hands. But vehement
passion is ingenious in resources. The Company's
servants were not only stimulated, but better instructed by the prohibition. They soon fell upon a contrivance which answered their purposes far better
than the methods which were forbidden: though in
this also they violated an ancient, but they thought,
an abrogated order. They reversed their proceedings. Instead of receiving presents, they made loans.
Instead of carrying on wars in their own name, they
contrived an authority, at once irresistible and irresponsible, in whose name they might ravage at pleasure; and being thus freed from all restraint, they indulged themselves in the most extravagant speculations of plunder. The cabal of creditors who have
been the object of the late bountiful grant from his
Majesty's ministers, in order to possess themselves,
under the name of creditors and assignees, of every
country in India, as fast as it should be conquered,
inspired into the mind of the Nabob of Arcot (then a
dependaI;t on the Company of the humblest order) a
scheme of the most wild and desperate ambition that
I believe ever was admitted into the thoughts of a
? ? ? ? 60 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
man so situated. * First, they persuaded him to con.
sider himself as a principal member in the political
system of Europe. In the next place, they held out to
him, and he readily imbibed, the idea of the general
empire of flindostan. As a preliminary to this undertaking, they prevailed on him to propose a tripartite
division of that vast country: one part to the Company; another to the Mahrattas; and the third to himself. To himself he reserved all the southern part of the great peninsula, comprehended under the general name of the Deccan.
On this scheme of their servants, the Company was
to appear in the Carnatic in no other light than as
a contractor for the provision of armies, and the hire
of mercenaries for his use and under his direction.
This disposition was to be secured by the Nabob's
putting himself under the guaranty of France, and,
by the means of that rival nation, preventing the
English forever from assuming an equality, much
less a superiority, in the Carnatic. In pursuance -of
this treasonable project, (treasonable on the part of
the English,) they extinguished the Company as a
sovereign power in that part of India; they withdrew the Company's garrisons out of all the forts
and strongholds of the Carnatic; they declined to
receive the ambassadors from foreign courts, and remitted them to the Nabob of Arcot; they fell upon,
and totally destroyed, the oldest ally of the Company,
the king of Tanjore, and plundered the country to
* Report of the Select Committee, Madras Consultations, January
7, 1771. See also papers published by the order of the Court of Directors in 1776; and Lord Macartney's correspondence with Mr.
Hastings and the Nabob of Arcot. See also Mr. Dundas's Appendix,
No 376, B. Nabob's propositions through Mr. Sulivan and Assam
Khan, Art. 6, and indeed the whole.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. 61
the amount of near five millions sterling; one after another, in the Nabob's name, but with English
force, they brought into a miserable servitude all
the princes and great independent nobility of a vast
country. * In proportion to these treasons and violences, which ruined the people, the fund of the Nabob's debt grew and flourished. Among the victims to this magnificent plan of universal plunder, worthy of the heroic avarice of the
projectors, you have all heard (and he has made
himself to be well remembered) of an Indian chief
called Hyder Ali Khan. This man possessed the
western, as the Company, under the name of the Nabob of Arcot, does the eastern division of the Carnatic.
It was among the leading measures in the design
of this cabal (according to their own emphatic language) to extirpate this Hyder Ali. t They declared
the Nabob of Arcot to be his sovereign, and himself
to be a rebel, and publicly invested their instrument
with the sovereignty of the kingdom of Mysore. But
their victim was not of the passive kind. They were
soon obliged to conclude a treaty of peace and close
alliance with this rebel, at the gates of Madras. Both
before and since that treaty, every principle of policy
* ", The principal object of the expedition is, to get money from
Tanjore to pay the Nabob's debt: if a surplus, to be applied in discharge of the Nabob's debts to his private creditors. " (Consultations, March 20, 1771; and for further lights, Consultations, 12th June,
1771. ), We are alarmed lest this debt to individuals should have
been the real motive for the aggrandizement of Mahomed Ali [the
Nabob of Arcot], and that we are plunged into a war to put him in
possession of the Mysore revenues for the discharge of the debt. " -Letter from the Directors, March 17, 1769.
t Letter from the Nabob, May 1st, 1768; and ditto, 24th April,
1770, 1st October; ditto, 16th September, 1772, 16th March, 1773.
? ? ? ? 62 SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS.
pointed out this power as a natural alliance; and on
his part it was courted by every sort of amicable
office. But the cabinet council of English creditors
would not suffer their Nabob of Arcot to sign the
treaty, nor even to give to a prince at least his
equal the ordinary titles of respect and courtesy. *
From that time forward, a continued plot was carried on within the divan, black and white, of the Nabob of Arcot, for the destruction of Hyder Ali.
As to the outward members of the double, or rather
treble government of Madras, which had signed the
treaty, they were always prevented by some overruling influence (which they do not describe, but
which cannot be misunderstood) from performing
what justice and interest combined so evidently to
enforce. When at length iyder Ali found that he had to
do with men who either would sign no convention,
or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and
who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved,
in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such
things, to leave the whole Carnatic an everlasting
monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those against
whom the faith which holds the moral elements of
the world together was no protection. He became at
length so confident of his force, so collected in his
might, that he made no secret whatsoever of his
* Letter from the Presidency at Madras to the Court of Directors,
27th June, 1769.
t Mr. Dundas's committee, Report I. , Appendix, No. 29.
? ? ? ? SPEECH ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT S DEBTS. 63
dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes
with every enemy and every rival, who buried their
mutual animosities in their common detestation
against the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he
drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the materials of
fury, havoc, and desolation into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of
woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart
conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell.
All the horrors of war before known or heard of
were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants,
flying from their flaming villages, in part were
slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age,
to the respect of rank or sacredness of function,
fathers torn from children, husbands from wives,
enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst
the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling
of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an
unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to
evade this tempest fled to the walled cities; but escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.
